tcptraceroute is a setuid-root program which drops root privileges
after obtaining a file descriptor used for raw packet capture.
However, it did not fully relinquish all privileges, and in the event
of an exploitable vulnerability, root privileges could be regained.

No current exploit is known, but this safeguard is being repaired in
order to provide a measure of containment in the event that an
exploitable flaw should be discovered.

For the stable distribution (woody) this problem has been fixed in
version 1.2-2.

The old stable distribution (potato) does not contain a tcptraceroute
package.

For the unstable distribution (sid) this problem is fixed in version
1.4-4.